


At The End of All Things

by TwoCatsTailoring



Series: Time Marches On [20]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: FFXV OC Week, Gen, Life during World of Ruin, World of Ruin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-11
Updated: 2017-10-11
Packaged: 2021-01-24 08:29:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21335248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TwoCatsTailoring/pseuds/TwoCatsTailoring
Summary: Beck and Penny and Danica all meet, and Penny finds some purpose.
Relationships: Danica Colon & Penelope Key, Original Female Character(s) & Original Female Character(s), Penelope Key & Beck Voight, Wedge Kincaid/Original Female Character(s)
Series: Time Marches On [20]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/826311
Kudos: 1
Collections: TwoCatsTailoring's Weeks and Exchanges





	1. Chapter 1

Danica picked her way through the crowds at the market, hoping that she’d be able to spot her roommate in the throng. It didn’t use to be like this. But then again, it had always been like this.**  
**

Just now it was like this because there was nowhere else for anybody to go really. If you weren’t a Hunter or a mercenary or mostly insane, the only place for you to be with any level of safety was in Lestallum. And even within the double walls of barbed wire and barricades, there was still no guarantee. The path from the Crag into the power plant was a well known weak spot and no amount of Hunter intervention could close it completely.

But within Lestallum, the only place to be or do anything at all to even be mildly entertained was the marketplace. Yeah, the supplies of food were unpredictable and the quality of what there was to have was even less reliable but they were learning how to deal. And at least here, they were all dealing together.

Still, it was getting harder and harder to stomach it. Danica was proud of her hometown, proud that it had opened its doors to the world, even as the population swelled to dangerous numbers in such a small area. She was proud too that at the first sign of violence among the suddenly thrown together nationalities had been put down with a firm hand by Lestallum’s informal police force.

And that same force was responsible for bringing together enough leadership for a provisional sort of government in the sudden, sucking absence of Niflheim’s forces. Where they had gone, nobody really knew or cared, and the provisional government was functioning well, even with the shortages and the hardships. She had every reason to be proud of her home.

Oh, who was she kidding? Two years into eternal night, no sign of salvation either through science or some vague ancient prophecy, and people were starting to die faster than seemed understandable. What kind of salvation could come from nothing? And was she supposed to just sit here and feel proud as things slowly sank into oblivion?

It was something she’d been thinking about for weeks and she’d realized she’d had the answer before she’d even asked herself the question. No, this wasn’t how she wanted to live whatever life she had left. That was why she’d already talked to the folks at the Hunter’s Station, why she’d already signed herself up for training, and why she was standing on the tips of her toes on a barrel, trying to spot Penny in the creeping throng at the Market.

Penny was easy to spot, not because she was tall (everybody was tall to Danica’s five foot nothing) but because there was just something about Penny that radiated class. The mass of people didn’t part for her but she was certainly able to move through them with a lot less jostling than most people got. Danica waved frantically to her, jumping up and down over the heads that surrounded her.

Once the pair were within earshot of one another, Danica wasted no time in telling Penny her plans.

“Are you sure,” Penny asked as they moved with the crowd, pooling their funds to buy what few provisions they could find for the next few days. “What about the plant? Not a day passes that they aren’t advertising for more people to help keep the lights on.”

“I know,” Danica sighed, shoving her unruly bangs out of her eyes. “And I’m not going to quit or cut my hours. I just….” She paused for a second and looked up at the sky, then scanned the crowds in the market and frowned deeply. “I’m going to Hunt on the weekends. After hours.”

Penny stopped moving for a second and blinked at her friend, fighting the urge to try to reason with her. It wouldn’t work. And, if she was just honest with herself, there probably was no reasoning that could be applied to this situation. Because the logical thing to do, the most reasonable thing for any of them to do, was to join the Hunters. Because in the grand scheme of things, sitting at what very much felt like the end of the world, it would be a more satisfying death than waiting for it to come in the next wave of disease that crashed over the city.

“That’s going to be a lot. You won’t have time for much of anything else,” Penny pointed out as she twisted her hair up high on her head and stabbed a pen through it to hold it in place.

“What else is there to have time for?” Danica asked, crossing her arms. “I don’t have hobbies that take up a lot of time and the hottest date I’ve had in the past three years was moving in with you.”

“Which was only hot in the literal sense,” Penny chuckled.

That day had been terrible with the heat and humidity making the air thick and every person in Lestallum was in the street trying to beat the heat in what little breeze there was. The leadership that had assumed management of the refugee crisis had asked that any property owners please consider opening their homes to those in need of housing.

Penny had arrived from Altissia before darkness overtook the world and not long after had bought Danica’s old family home. She’d come wanting a change and she had gotten it, along with everyone else in Eos when the sun went out. She hadn’t even been in the house a month when the request was made and Penny didn’t even have to think twice about it - she and her late husband had been EMTs committed to helping people in crisis, and his death in the Hydream’s floods had not changed her desire to keep at it.

She’d been on her way to the Hunter’s Station to get her name on the list of available residences when she’d met Danica coming home from work.

The conversation turned immediately to the housing request and it had only taken a few sentences between them to agree: Danica would give up her apartment near the power plant to ‘come home,’ renting a room from Penny in the hope that a family could stay together instead of having to split up across several locations.

Within days, that was what they had done and within a week, they had become firm friends. And literal roommates as more and more people had surged into Lestallum and needed a place to stay. Since she had signed up early, Penny retained some discretion about who she wanted in her house and she and Danica had, after a very long ten days of being subject to the sudden and distressingly repetitive display of a 60-year-old man’s penis, opted for single women and mothers with young children only.

No, Penny thought to herself as she reflected on Danica’s decision to Hunt on the side. There was no way that staying here waiting for the other shoe to drop was a viable option. She sighed and stretched her neck, rotating her head until she heard the bones give a gentle pop. “I only wish I could go with you.”

Danica shuffled her feet and gave Penny a long look. “Funny you should mention that,” she started, wrinkling up her nose and shoving her hair out of her face again. “Cause I saw that they were going to start putting medic’s on the Search and Rescue airships.”

Penny raised her eyebrows and gave Danica a long look, trying very hard to not be hopeful. “Oh?”

That was all the invitation that Danica needed. “Yep. Seems that so many of the Hunters and refugees that they pick up need first aid and none of the crews are really all that well trained in it. I mean,” she shrugged, “they obviously have the basics but having somebody on board who can do more than wrap a bandage or put some ice on something would come in handy. It might mean fewer line-of-duty deaths.”

And of all the things that nobody wanted in the field, a death from something fixable was a big one. The threat of becoming infected with the Scourge in those last minutes of life was very real, and the results were never anything short of traumatizing for the Hunters and friends who had to take down the daemon who was once a trusted brother-in-arms.

Penny watched Danica as she shrugged way too much for her to just be mentioning this casually. “And when is that supposed to start?” Not that she wasn’t genuinely interested, and it would probably be one of the few ways that any medical personnel could get out of this city of depression, death, and misery legally, but it sounded a little bit too easy.

“Not for another year, probably,” Danica admitted before rushing ahead, “But still, if you talked to them about it now it might be like with the house thing and there’d be some preference given.”

She had a point, and even though she sighed and rolled her eyes, Penny had to admit that the thought of it was nice. Hopeful, even and that wasn’t something she had felt in a long, long time.


	2. Enter Conundrums

Penny shook her wet hair through her fingers as she dropped down the stairs, following the sound of voices into the living room - it had been the dining room before they’d ended up with a houseful after the sun disappeared but now they needed a bigger table so the two rooms had to trade. Down the back hall and around the doorframe, she was looking forward to seeing her little ragtag group of housemates who, even if they were not all the best of friends were at least in this together and knew how to act like it.

She’d been gone for six months; her first tour as the professional medic on a search and rescue airship. Everything had gone really well, even though she had the impression that the ship’s captain liked her a little better than was professionally wise. Thankfully, he hadn’t been inclined to do anything more than bringing her tea and attempt conversation with her. Captain Kincaid was not a verbose man.

But, six months was the term and most everyone who qualified stayed as long as they could unless they were injured, burned out, or died. None of those was all that uncommon and about half of the medics who started finished the whole term. But after that, it was back to Lestallum for a week of readjustment, then back into the struggling medical system that resided on the ground.

The trouble was that they were running out of everything. Antibiotics were so scarce that they were reserved for those at death’s door. Surgeries were beset with problems ranging from having enough anesthetic to having the tools to even fix whatever they would find. They’d long ago run out of x-ray films and the machines sat unused now for more than a year. Even the ability to get the gloves that protected both patients and medical staff were hard to find and they had taken to sanitizing them as best they could and reusing any that did not have holes.

It was the end of the world. And nobody knew it better than Penny.

But, she did try to look on the brighter side of things. She was home again but comfortable in the knowledge that, as she’d not gotten hurt, lost a limb, or proved completely inept she would be able to return to the skies and the relative freedom of the Air Corps after six months in Lestallum. The brightness of hope and purpose felt good in the middle of what was, without a doubt, the worst possible situation. And if she was honest, it was a relief to be out of the gray jumpsuit with the reflective stripes down the arms and legs. The amount of sweat she’d dumped into that uniform was obscene.

Around the corner into the living room, Penny was greeted warmly by her housemates. The one baby in residence was the only major change to her eyes, though the other two children in the house had grown. The three other women who called this house their home took their turns at hugs and welcoming smiles, but Penny did not miss that there was a newcomer among them.

Quick math told her that Danica must have had a good reason for taking in one more person. The house was large - there was a bathroom for every floor and a total of four rooms that could be used as bedrooms - but adding in an 8th person would have been a major squeeze. She would have to pick Danica’s brain about it later though because the new housemate stood, crossed the room, and introduced herself before Penny could begin.

“Penny,” her voice was Gralea. All Gralea and Penny’s heart sped up. It’d been five years and the only people who had made it out of Niflheim hadn’t even been there when the Empire fell. Having grown up and lived in Altissia, the fear of Niflheim ran deep and long, it seemed. “It’s a pleasure to meet you at last. I’m Beck Voight.”

The look that passed around the room was sort of like a ripple effect. Yes, getting information out of Lestallum was a hard thing to do, but Danica had plenty of opportunities to do it when she was out with the Hunters. It was difficult, not impossible. But how something as serious as having a Gralean in the house hadn’t made it to her was something like a slap in the face.

But, almost unwillingly, Penny flipped backward into her upbringing. “Pleasure to meet you, too Beck. I can’t wait to hear the story of how you came to Lestallum.” And to my house, she added in thought only. How had this happened?

Danica at least had the grace to look guilty and the others found excuses to clear out as soon as possible, which was surprisingly fast. But, given that none of them had ever seen that particular look of stony irritation and calm on Penny’s face, maybe it wasn’t so surprising.

“Listen, just sit down and let me explain this,” Danica rushed as the room emptied of everyone but herself, Penny, and Beck. “It’s a shit story, but just listen before you combust, okay?”

“Who’s combusting, Dan?” Penny said without a smile on her face. Her voice was calm - probably too calm.

“You in about three seconds, I think.” Danica took a deep breath and began as Beck took a seat, folding herself up carefully into a neat package that hid her nearly six feet of height pretty well. Penny didn’t budge.

Danica shoved her bangs out of her face and launched herself into the story. “Eight weeks ago a group of Hunters out near Cauthess stumbled across Beck alone but unhurt. She didn’t try to hide or deny that she’d gotten out of Gralea at the last second, so they took her back to the rest area and cross-questioned her, going through her stuff.”

At this point, Beck herself broke in with a lopsided half-smile, “That’s oversimplifying. I’d been a biomedical intern in Gralea and when things began to get more strange than felt even vaguely reasonable, I walked away from my desk and never looked back. I ran away,” she admitted with a small shrug, “ignoring the injunctions to the populace to go underground and by some insane luck, managed to slip out of the city right before it died.”

Penny couldn’t not look at her, wide-eyed and her mouth hanging open just a bit. Everything she said was delivered with such factual neutrality and a lack of emotion that Penny wondered if she was serious. Everyone knew that Gralea was a death trap and had been for months before night fell. How had this woman just walked out? And where the hell had she been for five years of deepening darkness and constant daemon activity.

As if she sensed the question coming, Beck provided the answer, never breaking eye contact with Penny. “I walked as far as I could, knowing the landscape of Niflheim and the dispersion of facilities helped to keep me armed and alive, though it couldn’t save the tips of my fingers.” BEck held out her right hand and sure enough, the tips of her index and middle fingers were gone, the ends blunted at the first knuckle. “It took a long time, the areas around Tenebrae having been deserted when night fully overtook the world, but any fool can shoot straight if they don’t have to shoot too far.”

Penny had to give her that. She was no fighter, had no skill with any weapon, but even she could shoot an imp in some part of its body.

“I did not have to make it to Altissia, or what remains of it, to realize that I wasn’t going to be much welcome anywhere. But,” another small shrug, “I reasoned that if I had made it through Niflheim on my own, managing around Lucis couldn't be that much harder. And at first, it wasn’t.”

She left off there, not needing to add that things had changed dramatically over the past five years of darkness. The daemons had gotten bigger, more powerful, and greater in number. Penny had seen it with her own eyes these past six months. In the air, you were relatively safe but even that was not perfect. Too close to a mountain’s edge, land for too long, fly too low and even the airships were targets for daemons who could climb, jump, or fly.

“So how did you get here?” Penny finally asked in the intense silence of the room.

“The Hunters brought her in from Cauthess. The Prov’s kept her locked up for about two weeks, took all her stuff. You know the drill. But once they were satisfied that she wasn’t going to turn or cause problems, they turned her back over to the Hunters,” Danica supplied.

Penny raised an eyebrow.

“And she’s here because I was there when she flat refused to join them and refused to live with…”

“Anything with a penis,” Beck supplied for herself, her chin tilted at a defiant angle and her mouth in a frown.

If she was expecting Penny to balk at the idea, she would just have to learn to live with disappointment because if there was anything that Penny could understand, it was the desire to be free of the males of the species.

Most of what she’d said made sense. Nobody wanted anything to do with the people from Niflheim, blaming them for the cruelty and evil of their leadership. For the most part, the harshness of the hatred had mellowed into just general mistrust, but for the people who had lived under Niflheim's iron fist, understanding and good-will still came hard.

“Keyven’s got a penis, you know. I changed his diapers a few years ago,” Penny pointed out dryly.

“He’s four and so far his owly interest in me has been as someone to reach down the forbidden stoneware bowl that makes the satisfying bong noise when he whacks it with a spoon,” Beck returned without missing a beat. Sighing and rolling her slender shoulders back she asked abruptly, “So do you approve of me enough to let me stay?”

“I don’t know if I approve of you at all,” Penny replied as she considered everything she had heard and everything that she had not heard. There were a lot of holes in this story that she’d just been fed, but if the woman had been living here that long and the voices that had drawn her in here had been light and friendly enough, she wasn’t going to rock the boat just now.

Everyone who was still alive had been through a lot, she told herself. Who was she to judge this one who had come from what could only have been hell? Nobody survived Gralea; everyone who had made it out of Niflheim alive had been from other parts of the Empire or had been traveling when it fell. If this one woman had, then had survived on her own for this long, the least she could do was give her the benefit of the doubt.

“But I’m not going to throw you out. What do you do?”

“Right now, I’m trying to figure out if there is a way that I can help you,” Beck said with another lopsided smile. “I understand that medicines have been hard to come by?”

Penny nodded in answer. At least she was well informed.

Beck leaned forward and continued, “I’ve been researching the properties of some of the plants that are still growing to see if there is some kind of answer there. I have a few promising leads for one of the succulents that have been hardy enough to survive this long, but extracting the antibacterial properties might be a challenge. Would you like to see the work I’ve done so far?”

Penny followed Beck into the dining room and looked over her shoulder as she went over her research and methods and ideas so far. Penny had to admit that she didn’t understand a lot of it, but the overall ideas made sense. If they could harness the plant's natural healing ability somehow, there might be hope, at least for a little while longer. And it might prevent several painful deaths in the process.

Penny had circled the table as she read through some of Beck’s notes on another line of thinking - artificial antibiotics, again making little sense to her - when an unusual sight caught her eye out the front windows.

She watched for a moment, squinting at the figure who was making his way in the direction of their front door, hands shoved deep into his jeans pockets but his shoulders straight and his steps even. But it was his shoes who told her who it was.

“Shit!” The word exploded into the room in a stage whisper and she whirled, slamming Beck’s notebook back on the table. Danica jumped, yelled, and nearly spilled her glass of water and Beck just looked at her.

“Problem?”

“Yes! The captain of the ship I was on is walking toward the house right now and I think I know why,” Penny groaned. She really, really did not want this to be happening. In answer to the questioning looks she was getting from the other two women, she moaned, “I think he's going to ask me out.”

Danica snorted but Beck, not having the benefit of a long association with Penny, asked, “Is this a problem because you are a lesbian? Most men take that rather well until they ask you for videos or photos or a threesome.”

Penny gave Beck a quizzical look and replied, “No, not a lesbian. Just twice married and definitely not interested anymore.”

Beck made a monosyllabic answer of understanding and leaned on her hand, watching Penny being miserable while Danica contributed nothing to the situation except a steady stream of giggles.

“A fat lot of help you are,” Penny fired at her before raking a hand through her hair blowing out a long breath. “Turning him down would be so much easier if he wasn’t generally a decent human being.”

But there was nothing for this but to face it head-on, and one of the cardinal rules of the house was that no potential or actual male romantic partner got any further than the front steps. So without even bothering to change out of her shorts and tank top or put on shoes, Penny stepped out the door, sat down on the steps, and waited.

She didn’t have to wait long. “Penelope,” he greeted her once he was close enough to without shouting.

“Captain Kincaid. What brings you here so soon after we’ve landed?” Please let me be wrong, she thought. Please!

“I was wondering if you might like to have dinner with me sometime.”

Bless the man’s ability to not have to talk endlessly or explain himself, Penny thought. And the least she could do to reward that forward simplicity was be equally honest. “Thank you, but I’m going to have to say no.”

He nodded once and looked up at the porch roof for a few seconds. Astrals, she felt like a dirtbag for this. But which was worse, saying no when she meant it or saying yes when she didn’t?

When he looked back down, he was smiling. “I sorta figured that’s what you’d say. But, I had to try.”

Penny breathed a small chuckle at that response and her shoulders relaxed. She hadn’t even realized she’d been so tense.

“Can I ask why?”

“Can I tell you the truth and not risk losing my only ticket out of here every six months?” It was a legitimate concern. Medical staff were highly regulated members of society and with the general collapse of anything other than basic education, they weren’t being replaced at all. Leaving Lestallum with the search and rescue operations was a highly sought after position. One she didn’t want to lose.

It was about the choice. Yeah, the world was full of evil creatures who wanted her dead, but without Captain Kincaid on her side, she didn’t even get to meet Hunters at the gates.

“Absolutely.”

“My first husband was an abusive asshole. My second died in front of me. Both things happened before I was even 23.”

“But I asked you to dinner, not to a marriage,” he laughed.

“Dinners lead to marriages a lot of times.”

“Very true,” he admitted before lapsing into silence again.

Penny wasn’t sure what to say to that so she said nothing, surveying the street and her toes until he moved again and spoke.

“Friends, then?”

“If you mean actual friends, yes.”

The captain nodded once, his dark eyes understanding her perfectly now. He hadn’t grown up with five sisters and worked for Lady A without getting a clear understanding of some of the nuances of women’s lives.

“But with one condition,” Penny tacked on. “What’s your first name, Captain?”

He chuckled, a nice deep sound that made penny wish life wasn’t what it was, that the sun still lived, and that there was hope for a future brighter than the steady decline they were all in. Why did he have to be a really decent guy?

“Wedge. I can’t believe you were six months on my ship and never learned it.”

“I can’t either. But here we are.” A pause. “Thanks, Wedge.”

“Any time, Penelope.”

“Friends call me Penny.”

“Then so will I.”


End file.
